


This Is...

by Joodiff



Category: Waking the Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, PWP, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-11 22:23:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joodiff/pseuds/Joodiff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes things happen. It's Boyd and Grace and it's definitely adults only, but it may not actually be PWP. Enjoy!</p>
<p>
  <i>Some adult content. Don't like, don't read.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is...

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: I own nothing.  
> A/N: This is M-rated, people. No clue what it is, though.  
> Dedication: This is for all those who so good-naturedly put up with me and my foibles.  
> (This story was previously available at FFN.)

**This Is…**  
_by Joodiff_  
  
Sometimes it ends in shouting and door-slamming; sometimes it ends in sullen silence; sometimes it ends in sex. Sometimes it ends in an inexplicable combination of the three. This is one of those times. The sullen silence comes first, in the immediate wake of the argument, and hard on its heels comes the shouting and the door-slamming, Now they have moved on to the sex. Explosive, urgent and impetuous sex, right here in her office. Reckless, unwise and mind-bendingly inappropriate, but neither of them cares. She isn't thinking about much more than how powerful he is, how intensely male he is, and he's not in a position to worry about much more than the imperative biological need to thrust into her as fast and hard as he can.  
  
This is how it can get between them. The clever banter and the subtle flirtation abandoned, everything between them stripped to its most base, primal form. It inevitably goes somewhere, the perpetual sparking tension between them, and this is where it eventually erupts – in the door-slamming or the sex, or both. This is how it is now. When it is done they will both be a little sheepish, a little embarrassed – but not yet. For now there is just the animal need for possession, the frantic need to be possessed; his folly and hers burning bright in the same crucible. This is what they do. When the sky is dark, the tension is high and there is no-one around to bear witness, this is what can happen. Anything can trigger it; something and nothing can trigger it.  
  
She bites a lot harder than anyone would credit, but that's okay – he doesn't care. If she ever leaves visible bite-marks on his neck, his shoulders, he just smirks and wears them with swaggering masculine pride, revelling in her discomfiture. If he receives them, he carries those marks like battle-honours. It's just how things are. He loves her far more than anyone would believe – he just doesn't realise it. Not yet. A tiny, hidden part of her senses it, and one day when she finally understands the great, feral heart of him she will believe implicitly. But not on this day.  
  
He is seasoned muscle and primeval fury, she is gentle curves and boundless empathy and together they fill all their lost, empty spaces and temporarily heal all their raw wounds – because this is how they are. They fight, they fuck, they love and they lust; they wound and they heal, and sometimes on the days when they can barely stand to be in the same room together the conflict will end like this, in heat and sweat and hot, fervent words that tumble heedlessly into the all-consuming maelstrom but somehow linger far longer in the subconscious. This is what they are; walking-wounded; battle-scarred and defiant. They see it in each other, the strength, the fortitude, the iron-will to endure.  
  
They are tenderness and compassion, too. He roars his challenges, she speaks hers softly, but they bleed over the same pains and indignities. They care, both of them. They care for the victimised, the brutalised, the traumatised. It's who they are. He bristles, she bridles; he will lash out in frustration, she will do the same, but with cutting, clever words. As a single creature they will turn on an adversary in a heartbeat, each with their own part to play in the inevitable retribution. His teeth are stronger, his bite harder, but her claws are sharper and they slice with surgical precision – and when there's no opponent to defeat, they inexorably turn on each other. Sometimes it ends in shouting and door-slamming; sometimes it ends in sullen silence; sometimes it ends in sex…  
  
She will smell him on her skin for hours to come no matter how long she lies in scented foam. He will feel the slick, searing inner heat of her body tight around him for hours to come, no matter how hard he concentrates on the work he takes home with him. She will drive across the city with the scent of sex and musk clinging obstinately; he will do the same. It will shame and excite them both, and it will haunt their dreams. This is how it is.  
  
He is deep, deep inside her when they pause abruptly. They gaze at each other, both of them momentarily too aware of the staggering extent of their folly. Brown on blue, his eyes and hers. Intense. It dies quickly, the fleeting moment of lucidity. It is swept away and immolated, burned in the fire that consumes them. This thing they do can't bear the weight of scrutiny. It's too ephemeral, too bound to a fleeting moment of time and circumstance. Grizzled and leonine, he growls and increases the pace. She matches him, wild and unafraid. He wants, she wants. It's a compulsion, a thing they have to do, a thing they can't control.  
  
This is who and what they are, deep under the surface where everything is blood red. The time that races past brings them ever-closer to the moment when it will be more than animal rutting, more than challenge, frustration and impulse, but that moment is not this moment. This moment is brutal carnality on an intrinsic level, and they are both complicit, both guilty. She hits the peak first, not quietly, not elegantly. She hits the peak in fingernails that gouge, in muscles that go into spasm, in cries that speak of emotional pain as much as physical release. Her body seizes him, seeks to master him, tries to threaten him as it shudders and shakes and demands. Mindlessly, he goes with her, thrusting ever-faster, ever-harder. He is oblivious to everything else now. He doesn't know that her body is starting to calm, he doesn't know that the desperation is leaving her, that her embrace is becoming infinitely tender. He doesn't know that the fleeting, penitent kisses that fall on his throat and neck are bestowed as much in love as in vulnerability and regret.  
  
It takes him, breaks him. He is nothing but biological response, animal instinct. He comes inside her, deep inside her, in the place where she is hot and tight and barren. Nature will make nothing of this union, can make nothing of this union. It's how things are. His hips jerk for the last time and his head crashes down onto her shoulder. He is done, finished. Her answer is instinctive; she holds him in those dangerous, defenceless moments, and for those moments she loves him blindly, stupidly, unconditionally. This is how it is.  
  
It is over. The madness retreats, leaves them both. Now is the time for the sheepishness, the awkwardness. Now is the time for the inward cursing and the spiralling regret. Now is the time when they think they have done a very bad thing, now is when the boundary lines start to reappear and start to accuse them both. This should not happen, the lines say. But it does. It happens because there is something in each of them that instinctively seeks the other when the tension becomes unbearable.  
  
This is the reality. The grinding ache in his back, the stiffness in her hip. The distinctive animal scent that hangs in the air – sex and salt and semen. The accusing presence of files and folders, the cold glare of a computer screen. In a moment of truce they stay locked together. A gentle moment. Perhaps the only mutual gentle moment. The fire no longer burns, the overwhelming need has gone. This is how it is afterwards. In a final gesture to whatever this is, he kisses her with a tenderness that tears at both their hearts. It's a gift he doesn't need to give her, but he gives it anyway. He is not a bad man, she is not a weak woman. There is just something between them that causes these terrible, wonderful moments.  
  
Now they draw apart. Now the fumbling embarrassment takes hold. There is nothing glorious about the practicalities that have to be attended to. The films, the paintings, the romantic novels, they do not show this. Shamefaced grins that attempt to disguise how uncomfortable they both now feel; the adjusting, the smoothing, the attempt to banish the palpable evidence of what has happened here in this workspace.  
  
There have to be words. They keep them to a minimum. Neither speaks of this thing they have done. They speak only of necessities. His mind is already on what he still has to do before he can sleep, her mind is already on the need to purge the feel of him from her body. In time, things will be different. The moment will come where they do this thing gently and gracefully with the caress of soft sheets against their skin. The moment will come when the aftermath is a more intimate thing, when they will lie entwined as they say things that for now they can only dream of.  
  
There's something in him, a touch of old-fashioned gallantry, perhaps, that makes him walk with her as far as the big double doors that lead to the beginning of the real world. She feels it, whatever it is in him, but she says nothing. This long, contradictory working day is at an end.  
  
They stop, though, by those doors. They stop, and for a moment something passes between them. She smiles faintly, still a little sheepish, and restrains the impulse to reach out to him, to touch him. Touching him is not appropriate.  
  
He says, "Grace…"  
  
Her reply is as gentle as it is firm. "Goodnight, Boyd."  
  
This is how they are. This is how they will be for a long while to come. But it is not how they will always be.  
  
She walks alone to her car, he returns alone to his office. This is how it is.  
  
_\- the end -_


End file.
